In my memory, the walls are thick-cut wood panels, ripe with years of smoke and spilled beer. This is probably untrue, but I like it better this way. The three turns circles on the stage, pretty cowboy boots shuffling amid the wires.
Tin-can lanterns, warm from 60 watt light bulbs, throw a warm light over each smiling, upturned face. Lit from below, noses cast campfire shadows and the eyes gleam. A hand hangs over the neck of an upright bass, like a friend guiding a drunkard to bed. The fiddler crosses her thin legs, then uncrosses them, rosining her bow. Between the two the girl with the guitar smiles, something guileless and bordering on beatific in her face. And then, with a rushed and breathy 1-2-3-4 the music skids to a start.
The music is popping and shimmying and as warm as the jolt off a transmitting tower racing to your daddy's Jackson Bell. The bass thuds and slaps, the grin on the boy echoed in his crawling hands, his powerful thumbs clanging like hammers. The fiddler twists her lean form, the notes colliding and crashing and piling up layers deep around her fingers. Above her head the horse-hair snaps one long string at a time, and hangs in the air until she saws the bow again. After a hard run she smiles, briefly, and then returns to her furrowed brow. All the while the guitarist strums, her hips huluing behind her guitar as she leans into the microphone and lets loose with a voice half-Mildred Bailey, half-square dance debutante. The lyrics bubble up and curl sweetly as she whoops and hollers, sighs and holds a note so long and clean it prickles the back of your neck.
The room is full of sweating cans of beer and melting whiskey ice, and hands tapping the rhythm on a dozen different denim pant legs.
Ah this is so right on, Carrie! I love descriptions of places and live music. Exceptional writing as always, lady.
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